Don’t Do Their Job for Them – More Breadloaf Thoughts and Rejections, Recovery, Rest, and Dahlias

Painted Lady Butterfly, Dahlia

Don’t Do Their Job For Them – More Breadloaf Thoughts and Rejection

So, a day or so ago I got a “big” rejection. A beloved publisher who had had my manuscript for over a year wrote a nice rejection note saying my manuscript had made it through several rounds of readers but alas, they were not going to publish it. And I couldn’t help but be somewhat depressed and discouraged by it. You’d think by this point I’d be used to rejection. But still, sometimes, they hurt. They make me feel stopped at a stop sign of the universe.

This is after a week of getting two regular acceptances (one for a place I’ve wanted to get into a very long time) and a regular rejection. All within a week of still trying to digest the two week extravaganza of virtual Breadloaf.

Someone – or maybe more than one someone – told me during Breadloaf, “Editors and publishers get paid good money to reject your work. Don’t do their work for you.” (On seeing my notes, this was said by Brenda Shaughnessy in her lecture.) That is, don’t pre-reject yourself. Another person told me “It’s a tough time for us to get our work published. Publishers are struggling and overwhelmed with submissions. You have to just keep sending to presses you love. Believe in your work. Don’t give up.” These messages are essentially the same message.

It is work to write, and to write your best work, and it is a different kind of work to send that work out into the world, maybe to be rejected and forgotten. This all while trying not to worry about the world, dying of covid right outside your door, or how to pay your bills, or why you are writing in the first place and not doing something to fix all the problems of that world. And yet, a butterfly outside your door appears, and momentarily, help and hope. And you feel you can write, and send out your work, again.

Red and white dahlia

Recovery and Rest and Dahlias

This week I’ve been recovering (I got sick during virtual Breadloaf, I guess through Zoom? Just kidding. I seem to always catch something during August, somehow – and yes, I took a covid test and it was negative) and been trying to enjoy the clear, cooler days, the last days of summer, the blooming dahlias, the waning August light, the two new piglets at the farm down the street. I’m trying to believe in the good in the world, and making my body healthy and whole by resting and eating fresh vegetables and getting some fresh air and sunlight.

My husband is recovering from a paralyzed vocal cord, a fairly serious and maybe permanent problem. We are planning to take some time off and spend nearby in nature, unplugged from the internet and work and news. (I am also going to my first residency in a long time – I think six years? Too long…)

It is part of a life, a marriage, to being a good writer or a good employee, to take time off, to rest. Especially if you’re in the middle of year two of the plague, if you have immune system problems that make the plague more dangerous that it would be to others, if you feel that you are trembling on the verge of quitting something, if you have become depressed, hopeless, unable to sleep because of anxiety, short-tempered, too angry. It might be good to spend some time with trees in a forest, with waves of a sea bigger than you, to spend time noticing the end of summer blooms, and animal life, around you. In a whirlwind of tragedies, each tragedy might become less real to you, and we lose a bit of our humanity, our empathy, especially when we are stressed and tired and have already felt enough tragedy has happened. (Unfortunately we do not get to control this.) Does the world need you to fix it right this second? (And maybe it does! Heroic actions during tragedies are always welcome.)  Or do you need time to heal yourself before you can do any good in the world? Listen to your self – what do you truly need? And go spend some time listening to the hummingbirds, the dahlias, whatever they’re saying.